Is it a solid? Is it a liquid?! NO! It's a non-Newtonian fluid!!!!!

Year 5 have been busy exploring solids, liquids and gases. Today we came across a substance which can be both a solid AND a liquid! These are called non-Newtonian fluids and it's all to do with the particles.

When the fluid is free to move by itself, the particles have time to move freely past each other. But when the fluid is impacted quickly, the particles don't have time to move and they get locked, meaning it behaves like a solid!

We were wowed by this and really enjoyed getting messy experimenting with it!

Miss Dickinson had a question. As solids are more protective than liquids, would a non-Newtonian liquid protect an egg when dropped from a height?!

Of course, we had to test this...

Miss Dickinson bravely scaled the climbing frame (no mean feat when you're older than 10!). After enclosing our egg in the non-Newtonian fluid in a zip-lock bag, she dropped it from the very top.

What do you think happened?

Spoiler: it was completely still in-tact!

Maybe we should all carry our eggs home from the supermarket in non-Newtonian fluid from now on...